Many Pauls Valley and Whitebead students are learning some important lessons, such as the spirit of giving during the holidays.
Their lesson comes as they help a food pantry — the Pauls Valley Samaritans — with the extra needs that group faces at the holiday season. The Samaritan food bank operates year-round.
On Friday, students from the upper grades at Whitebead joined other Pauls Valley students as they gathered all the non-perishable food they had collected in recent days, placed the goods in a bus and took it to a local church for a Samaritan drop off.
A sponsor for the Whitebead students’ effort says a competition between classes to see which could collect the most food fueled a push that resulted in a record breaker for the school.
“It killed our totals from last year. It probably quadrupled it,” Jenny Thompson said about this year’s total food donations.
Thompson is one of the sponsors for a student government group, consisting of about 30 Whitebead students, sixth through eighth grade, who volunteer to help with various community-related projects, such as the collection of food for the Samaritans.
Lou Hall, president of the Samaritans, said students and staff at schools in Pauls Valley and Whitebead are a big part of the food collection effort every year.
“We couldn’t do it without the schools,” Hall said. “Whitebead always does a great job.”
Not only was it a big year for donations from Whitebead, Thompson said there were some pretty neat stories that went along with the effort.
Sixth grade student Jesse Joyner took $200 of his personal Christmas money to purchase food from a local store and donate it to the school’s contribution to the Samaritan effort.
“I am very impressed with his generosity,” Thompson said.
The young Joyner is also feeling pretty good about giving to others.
“I’ve been to places before where I couldn’t afford to buy the stuff there,” Joyner said. “With this money I knew I could help people. I wanted to buy some cans of food for the Samaritans and help out.”
“It feels good to help out some people. Hopefully it will help. I’m just glad I got the chance to help,” he said.
Then there was Steven Vines, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Whitebead. He used a red wagon to go door to door in Paoli collecting food donations.
“His class lost but it’s all in the spirit of giving,” Thompson said, referring to the class competition.
According to Hall, the “community effort” was needed after a record demand for Samaritan food baskets at Thanksgiving.
“Thanksgiving was the biggest one we’ve ever had. Our pantry was bare. It was the first time we had ever been out of green beans,” she said.
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Whitebead seventh and eighth grade students created a line and passed along food they had collected as they unloaded donations to the Pauls Valley Samaritans holiday effort Friday in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church.
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